Prosecutors charge they enriched themselves by allowing ads to run in the digital classified directory that they knew were used solely for the purposes of prostitutes to hook up with customers for sex.

They are being held in a Sacramento jail pending arraignment on Wednesday.

The CEO of the site, Carl Ferrer, was arrested in Houston on Oct. 6 after getting off a plane from Amsterdam.

He, too, was named in a 10-count criminal complaint for pimping a minor, as well as the more serious charge of unlawfully pimping a girl whom he knew to be under 16 years of age.

Larkin and Lacey face a maximum of six years in prison if convicted. Ferrer faces more than 21 years.

Elizabeth MacDougall, who has represented Backpage in the past, had argued the classified ads on the sleazy site never specifically mentioned sex and are therefore a form of free speech.

Carl FerrerAP

Prosecutors charge that the Web site was used as a hook-up site by prostitutes — some as young as 13 years old.

The site has been the subject of Senate hearings and had drawn heat from attorneys general in several states.

Lacey and Larkin had started New Times, an alternative weekly in Phoenix that eventually expanded into a nationwide chain.

In 2005, it capped the expansion with the purchase of the Village Voice, one of the oldest and most well-known of the alternative weeklies.

Facing heat from prosecutors and Congress, they sold the newspapers to an investment group — but hung onto the adult classified business.

California investigators said the site registered sales of more than $2 million a month in California alone and had total revenues of more than $150 annually.